Sunday, July 29, 2012

Other than Mo Rivera, modern closers don't measure up

By DAN TRAMMEL
@HighwaytoHall

Lee Smith retired in 1997 as Major League Baseball’s
all-time leader in saves.

In 2012, his 10th year on the Hall of Fame
ballot, Smith received 50 percent of the votes for the first time. He is still
well shy of the 75 percent necessary for enshrinement, and it appears unlikely
he will ever receive the necessary amount.

This is a good thing.

Although he has 478 regular season saves, he never pitched
in the World Series and has a career postseason record of 0-2 with 1 save. More
than any other positions, relief pitcher and placekicker are judged by
postseason performance. Morten Andersen and Gary Anderson may be the two
highest scoring players in NFL history, but their zero points in the Super Bowl
are going to resonate with the voters.

Adam Vinatieri may trail Morten by 792 points and Gary by
682, but his two Super Bowl winning kicks, combined with the game-tying and
winning kicks in the “Tuck Rule Game,” put him in a much better position for
enshrinement than any other kicker. Similarly, Mariano Rivera punched his
ticket to Cooperstown with 11 World Series
saves and 5 Championship rings.

Although some players (see Ernie Banks) overcame a lack of
team success to join the elite (and deservedly so), most players have not been
so fortunate. Hall of Fame voters look, in part, on how a player performed on
the big stage.

Comparing a wide receiver’s numbers to Lynn Swann is a
fool’s mission. Swann was not elected due to his regular season numbers. He is
enshrined in Canton
as a result of his otherworldly Super Bowl performances.

Reggie Jackson is not remembered for the three home runs he
hit on July 2, 1969 against the Seattle Pilots. He is remembered for the three
home runs he hit in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series against the Los Angeles
Dodgers.

World Series stars like Mark Lemke and Buddy Biancalana will
never be Hall of Famers because they lacked any semblance of regular season
success. But postseason achievements help the candidacy of good players, and
help turn the great players into legends.

Currently, 5 players who were predominantly relief pitchers
are in the Hall of Fame. Let’s first look at their World Series performances:

Name

Record

Saves

ERA

Championships

Rollie Fingers

2-2

6

1.35

3

Goose Gossage

1-0

2

2.63

1

Dennis Eckersley

0-2

1

5.79

1

Bruce Sutter

1-0

2

4.70

1

Hoyt Wilhelm

0-0

1

0.00

1

Similar to Smith, Fingers also retired as the all-time saves
leader. But being a part of three straight World Series Champions helped earn
his ticket. Although the other pitchers did not have the same World Series success
as Fingers, they were each the closer of a World Series Champion. And so many
times the lasting image of a World Series is of the pitcher celebrating after
recording the final out, an opportunity Smith never had.

Smith’s supporters like to compare his regular season numbers
to those relievers currently in the Hall of Fame. Wilhelm pitched in a
different era and Eckersley was a starting pitcher for a large portion of his
career so they are not fair comparisons.

Fingers, Gossage, and Sutter are the only three to which we
can compare Smith.First, we must look
beyond the number of saves. Smith recorded more than the other three but the
save statistic is overvalued. Relievers in previous eras pitched more often in
tie games and were expected to pitch multiple innings. Today’s closers enter
the ninth inning with the lead in a “save situation,” which, many times, is a
three-run lead. According to Bill James in his Historical Baseball Abstract, a
team will win a game 99 percent of the time if it uses its closer in the 9th
inning to save a three-run lead. If a team doesn’t use its closer in that
situation, it will win 98 percent of the time.

So why exactly is the save the best indicator of a closer’s
worth?

Let’s look at the list of the top 10 pitchers based on average
number of outs each pitcher recorded in his saves (minimum 200 saves):

Hoyt Wilhelm

5.436

Gene Garber

5.399

Dan Quisenberry

5.189

Rollie Fingers

4.815

Bruce Sutter

4.733

Goose Gossage

4.716

Sparky Lyle

4.685

Dave Smith

3.898

Dave Righetti

3.893

Jeff Reardon

3.845

Lee Smith would be 13th on this list with 3.722
outs per save, which is a huge dropoff from Sutter, Gossage, and Fingers. Smith
suffers here because the reliever position changed toward the beginning of his
career. He demonstrated the ability to pitch more than one inning but was not
given as many opportunities as the others. For those interested, here is the
list of the pitchers with the fewest outs per save (200 saves min.):

Brian Fuentes

2.917

Joe Nathan

2.979

Jose Mesa

2.981

Francisco Rodriguez

2.99

Brad Lidge

2.991

Trevor Hoffman

3.005

Troy Percival

3.031

Francisco Cordero

3.033

Rod Beck

3.034

Jose Valverde

3.061

Billy Wagner

3.069

This list obviously contains more current players, including
Trevor Hoffman and Billy Wagner, helping to illustrate how the use of the
relief pitcher has changed.

Let’s now look at the list of the pitchers with the most
saves of 4 or more outs:

Rollie Fingers

201

Goose Gossage

193

Bruce Sutter

188

Lee Smith

169

Dan Quisenberry

160

Jeff Reardon

152

Hoyt Wilhelm

144

Sparky Lyle

134

Mike Marshall

127

Gene Garber

127

Mariano Rivera

116

The top 3 are in the Hall of Fame, followed by Smith and Dan
Quisenberry, who received 3.8 percent of the vote in his only year on the
ballot, despite 4 consecutive top 3 finishes in Cy Young Award voting. Rivera
is headed to the Hall of Fame and stands far above all modern day pitchers in
this category. (Since 1994, Keith Foulke is second to Rivera with 55 saves of
more than one inning).

Here is the list of pitchers with the most saves of 6 or
more outs:

Rollie Fingers

135

Bruce Sutter

130

Goose Gossage

125

Dan Quisenberry

120

Hoyt Wilhelm

114

Gene Garber

107

Mike Marshall

95

Lee Smith

94

Sparky Lyle

91

Tug McGraw

79

Jeff Reardon

78

The same 3 pitchers are at the top of this list, followed by
Quisenberry and Hall of Famer Wilhelm.

Out of curiosity, the list of pitchers with the most saves
of 9 or more outs is as follows:

Hoyt Wilhelm

53

Gene Garber

52

Mike Marshall

40

Bob Stanley

37

Dan Quisenberry

37

Rollie Fingers

36

Bill Campbell

35

Sparky Lyle

32

Tug McGraw

31

John Hiller

29

Wilhelm takes over the top spot, with Fingers, Quisenberry, Marshall, Garber, and
Lyle also appearing on all three lists.

Of course closers were not only used to pitch the late
innings, they were brought in to put out “fires,” thus the moniker “firemen.”
And not all “fires” are created equal. Preserving a 1-run lead with 0 outs and
a runner on third base is not the same as preserving a 3-run lead with 2 outs
and a runner on first base. Nonetheless, here is the list of relief pitchers
(minimum 100 saves) who inherited the most runners:

Name

Inherited Runners

Inherited Runners
Scored

Percentage

Jesse Orosco

1049

261

24.88

Sparky Lyle

969

330

34.06

Tom Burgmeier

852

249

29.23

Goose Gossage

832

277

33.29

Lindy McDaniel

823

295

35.84

Dan Plesac

818

222

27.14

Rollie Fingers

782

225

28.77

Kent Tekulve

771

216

28.02

Hoyt Wilhelm

698

245

35.10

Darold Knowles

695

192

27.63

Here are Gossage, Fingers, Wilhelm, and Lyle again. Orosco
was terrific in not allowing inherited runners to score. Now that we have a
baseline to follow, let’s look at the same list but only include those pitchers
who recorded the most saves of 4 or more outs (shown previously), with Hoffman
and Eckersley thrown in:

Name

Inherited Runners

Inherited Runners
Scored

Percentage

Sparky Lyle

969

330

34.06

Goose Gossage

832

277

33.29

Rollie Fingers

782

225

28.77

Hoyt Wilhelm

698

245

35.10

Gene Garber

647

231

35.70

Dan Quisenberry

523

201

38.43

Jeff Reardon

523

157

30.02

Mike Marshall

513

173

33.72

Lee Smith

510

143

28.04

Bruce Sutter

445

137

30.79

Mariano Rivera

352

102

28.98

Dennis Eckersley

349

91

26.07

Trevor Hoffman

346

70

20.23

In this list of 13 pitchers, Hoffman and Eckersley have the
lowest percentage of inherited runners scoring, but they also inherited the
fewest runners. Sutter inherited a surprisingly low number of runners. Smith
and Fingers stand out on this list, while Quisenberry struggled with runners on
base. Additionally, Lyle appears to be the forgotten reliever in history,
appearing on all of our lists (excluding the one naming the pitchers with the
fewest outs per save), winning the 1977 American League Cy Young Award, and
finishing 3rd in the 1972 MVP voting. He spent 4 years on the Hall of Fame
ballot, peaking at 13.1 percent.

Although Smith retired with more saves than any other
pitcher, he was not used in the same manner as Fingers, Gossage, and Sutter.
Judging from his track record, that appears to be more the fault of his
managers and the philosophical change of the best way to use closers.

Without a World Series moment or any postseason success to
fall back on, his candidacy hinges on the save record which he once held. This
simply is not enough to get him into the Hall of Fame.

If it was, we would have to induct the man whose record he
broke. Jeff Reardon. He received 24 votes in his only year on the ballot.